Long Dawg’s seconds of hesitation were over. He pulled his Beretta and ran past Mario who was still screaming, or trying to with all the blood clogging his throat and half his face missing. He rounded the back of the van, maybe he could save Jimmy from that crazy little bastard. But what he saw stopped him in his tracks.
Jimmy wasn’t yelling because he had no throat. The kid was ripping at it, blood was spraying, a long white…. something…. in his teeth as he jerked around and looked straight into Laurence’s eyes.
Long Dawg was gone. Mama’s little Laurence stood there looking at a horror he had never even imagined in his worst nightmares. Not even the ones where he was back in South America that woke him up in sweats and night terrors, images of Cartel mutilated bodies fresh in his mind again.
The kid sprang at him and he answered with the Beretta. The 9mm rounds peppered the kid as fast as he could pull the trigger, sending him sprawling backward a step with each impact, keeping him dancing and upright. The fifteen rounds were down the pipe and the slide locked back in seconds, the kid finally slumping to the ground near Jimmy’s still form.
Laurence stared through the gun smoke curling up from the end of the barrel at something that just could not be.
It couldn’t. But it was.
The kid wasn’t dead. He had just emptied a full mag into him, Laurence knew most of them hit, hell it was nearly point blank. He saw the kid's body jerking like he was being electrocuted but he… it…. Was still trying to crawl towards him. He could see chunks of his backbone sticking out where at least one of the rounds had shattered it. There wasn’t even that much blood, just the big holes in the kids’ pajamas.
Long Dawg started backing up. He had heard the cop scream for everybody to get in the building and had seen the old white guy jump back into his minivan and smoke his tires as he sped away from the pumps.
He looked around, stunned to indecision, not knowing what to do first. Mario was still moaning, but Jimmy looked dead. The little kid was still trying to crawl towards him, the cop was screaming like he was being eaten too and the damn little kid was still coming at him.
Mario was a mess, trying to stand. The cop said everybody get in the store. He couldn’t leave in his car, he needed to get the van out of here. The van had the coke in it, disguised in paint cans. And that damn little kid was getting closer. He turned to run to Mario but some beardy ass trucker was there helping him up, yelling at Long Dawg.
“What?”
“Turn that shit off!” he bellowed at him, a wave of his gun at Long Dawg’s Chrysler, supporting Mario on his other arm. Laurence looked at him then at his car. Right, he thought. Right.
The music.
Turn it off. So we can hear.
He didn’t particularly like it so loud anyway, it was just all part of the plan to draw any attention away from the van and onto him.
He looked back at the kid still crawling towards him with its broken back and one shattered arm and fifteen bullet holes in him.
The trucker had noticed and was staring at it with his head cocked to one side like he was trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at. Laurence ran to his car and hit the stereo remote, silencing the thundering subwoofers instantly. The quiet was worse.
He could hear the rasping and hissing of the thing as it doggedly kept coming at him. He grabbed a spare mag out of his console and jacked it in, letting the slide go home but before he could shoot it another 15 times, the trucker loosed one round to its forehead and it dropped.
Still and silent at last.
Mario was blubbering now, holding his hand over the missing parts of his face, his blind eyes squished and running down his one cheek. Laurence felt ill. His head was light. He leaned back against the car, afraid he was going to pass out.
“Just breathe,” the trucker told him. “I need you in the game. This ain’t over yet.”
Across the parking lot from where the big rigs were parked, a man was looking towards them. It was obvious he had come from the trucks to see if he could help but had just stopped in place, unsure whether to continue or run back to the safety of the parking lot when the shooting had started. It had all happened so fast. A minute or two. No more.
He stood there, a big tire thumper club in his hand and yelled over “What’s going on?”
Gunny ignored him. “Here,” he said to Long Dawg. “Come here. Help me with this guy. You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s blood.” He paused, wincing at his choice of words. “Yeah, I know him.”
“There’s a doctor’s office in the truck stop, get him back there, somebody can try to get the bleeding stopped,” Gunny said, handing him off to the skinny black man and getting them started walking. “I’ll check on that other guy.”
But he had seen the death rattle in the man’s feet as they protruded out from behind the van. He knew that shake. He’d seen it before. There wasn’t anything he could do. He looked back towards the entrance of the truck stop, where everything had just started a minute ago.
Cobb had come out and was helping the bleeding biker back into the shop, hustling him towards Doc’s little office in Driver’s Alley. The girl that had been on the big Honda had wrapped something around the Deputy’s arm and with a couple of the other truckers help, they were headed back inside.
He saw Scratch with an M-4 at the front door, holding it open for them, waving the black kid and that poor guy with his eyes gouged out to hurry up. Gunny gave his head a rueful half shake. Who woulda thunk it? Ol’ Cobb’s gun decorations weren’t just decorations after all.
“Watch out!” Kim-Li yelled from the catwalk on top of the main Quonset hut and pulled the Garand up to her shoulder.
Gunny followed her line of sight and saw the man who he had just watched die bounding across the parking lot. The trucker with the tire thumper was no longer in a state of indecision.
When he saw a man with a ripped open neck wearing a white pair of painters overalls splattered in blood bounding towards him using hands and feet like an animal, he turned and ran. The safety of his truck was close, he could see it idling in the quiet September morning and he didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he knew he didn’t want any part of it. He ran.
But not fast enough.
Gunny took off after them but knew he would be too late to do any good. There were other truckers he could see, peering out of their windshields, having been awoken by all the gunfire. A few of them took in the situation instantly and reacted just as quickly.
No! Gunny thought as he ran. “Stay in your truck!” he yelled but knew they wouldn’t hear him over the idling diesels. They didn’t know the situation. They hadn’t seen what he had just witnessed. They only saw some thug chasing down one of their own. And that just wouldn’t do. Their good hearts were going to get them killed.
He couldn’t take a shot at the painter, it was too far for his pistol and a fast moving target. He wished Kim would fire but knew the angle was wrong, she might hit the fleeing trucker.
Or maybe she couldn’t force herself to shoot a man. She was just a kid. She was a great shot, had the trophies to prove it, but paper targets just weren’t the same. She hadn’t seen the man die, he had been under the fuel island canopy. She didn’t have all the facts. Nobody did but him. And he still didn’t know shit. Just what his eyes had seen and even though his logical mind was screaming in protest, his battle mind was coldly processing everything. It was coming to a conclusion that was impossible. Didn’t matter. He was acting on it until proven wrong.
Bootleg DVD sellers you thought were friendlies that had IED’s in their boxes was impossible to imagine until it happened. Little kids you had just given a candy bar stabbing you in the belly with a dirty knife was impossible until it happened.
Mothers strapping bombs to their 8-year-olds sending them laughing and smiling into the middle of your team was impossible until it happened.
And Zombies were impossible … until they happened.
C
hapter 5
The truck driver almost made it to his rig before he was brought down in a heap, sliding on the gravel, screaming in fear, pain and panic. He turned and tried to fight using his tire thumper and the other drivers were there almost instantly, pulling at the bloody painter.
But they didn’t know what they were dealing with. They had brought a pool noodle to battle a Nuclear Armada in Gunny’s mind. The painter was a whirling dervish, biting, ripping, tearing, not caring who he bit, just seeking to satiate his desire for blood.
To taste the sweetness of man’s flesh. By the time Gunny had crossed the parking lot to kick it square in the face, knocking it off of the man on the ground, the other four had already drawn away. They were in a state of disbelief at the ferocity of the attack, all of them with gashes and bites. Deep scratches and chunks of flesh missing from arms and legs.
The thing on the ground wasn’t finished, but it was stunned, if only a little. Gunny kicked out again, his heavy boot bouncing its head on the wheel of the rig the driver had been trying to climb into. Then he stomped down hard on its neck as the head hit the gravel and held it long enough to put a 9mm round into its snarling face. Gore splashed out of the back of its head and it went still instantly. The other drivers stared at him, all of them breathing hard, stunned looks on their faces.
“What…?” one of them started to ask but couldn’t finish the thought.
They were all bleeding, breathing deep. A little shell shocked in the quiet rumble of the big diesel beside them and the sound of Wire Bender shouting over the CB. “Stay in your trucks!” He was yelling. “And somebody blow your horn to wake everybody else up!”
There was a cacophony of sound as a dozen trucks blasted air and train horns. Some of them had just witnessed what had happened and the radio lit up with chatter, everyone talking over everybody else.
“What… “The man started again. “What the hell’s going on?” He was bleeding freely from a set of nasty looking scratches across his bare chest, one of his nipples was nearly torn off.
“Zombies” Gunny panted.
The four of them stared at him. It was too unreal to be true. To unreal not to be true. Gunny knew two of them, the others he may have seen in passing. He couldn’t recall.
The man on the ground was moaning and holding his chest that was bleeding through his fingers. He had half a dozen bites on him. Gunny stepped off the dead painter and put a little distance between him and the men.
“Hold on,” Ozzy said. “Zombies?”
“Bullshit.” One of the drivers Gunny couldn’t quite place said. “No such thing. Hopped up on Angel Dust is a better guess.”
“Open your eyes. Look.” Gunny pointed to the painter, to his ripped open neck that was missing half of the throat and larynx. “I don’t care how many drugs you do, you don’t get up and try to eat people after that happens to you. And I just saw that guy pumping gas. He was normal. Until he was killed by that little Mexican kid.”
He was trying to explain. Trying to reason it out in his own head. Trying to figure out if what he was saying was even possible, let alone true. “I saw that kid take fifteen rounds to the chest and still try to bite me,” he said. He was waiting for someone to play devil’s advocate. Someone to tell him that he was wrong. That the black kid had missed all those times. That what you saw, you didn’t really see. But no one did.
Gumball looked like he was going to hurl. He was taking deep, slow breaths and all the color had drained out of his face. “I got bit.” Ozzy said “Does that mean I’m supposed to turn into a zombie?” he asked, eyeing the Glock in Gunny’s hand.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “All I know is what I see. You saw it, too.” He ran his hand through his sandy blonde hair that was getting too long again, curling just above his collar. They were all staring at him. It was hard to think straight with all the noise. Some ass was still blowing his air horn, trucks were firing up, and everybody’s radios were cranked up loud.
Drivers with linears were walking all over each other trying to find out what was happening. Some of the trucks were starting to pull out, air brakes hissing as they were released. “Let’s get this guy inside, back to Doc’s office,” he said and motioned to the man on the ground.
“Doc ain’t here this early,” Gumball said, wrapping his bleeding arm in his T-shirt, a grimace of pain on his face. “And he needs an ambulance, not some old sawbones that gives physicals.”
“Phones are dead,” Gunny said bending over to help the fallen man stand up. The smart part of his brain was screaming “Be careful! Blood! Don’t get any on you! Get out of here while you still can! Run!”
The other part that had been trained from birth to be kind to animals, to be a gentleman, don’t hit your sister, open a ladies car door, you’ll stand before God someday, never leave a fallen brother on the battlefield, help the helpless… that part was overriding the selfish part of him.
It was making him do what he thought he must. Making him try to help the other man to his feet. But the man had stopped moaning and his hands had slid away from his bites and lay still in the gravel. Gunny stopped in mid-bend. The wounds hadn’t seemed that bad at first glance, but he did have a lot of them. His face and arms had chunks missing. His chest and neck. And there was a lot of blood on the ground.
“Run! Run! Run!” his mind screamed. He looked at him, at his face, at his mangled lip, his torn cheek. He was still. His chest wasn’t moving up and down. Was he still breathing? No way was he going to give CPR. No way. He couldn’t hear him breathe but who could hear anything with all the trucks and horns and radio chatter and...
The eyes sprung open. Black. Pupils fully dilated. Only the slightest orb of blue around the edges. Gunny reacted immediately, springing backward and bringing his gun up in the same motion as the creature that used to be a man uttered a guttural sound and bounded to his feet. The other men ran as the thing sprung at Gunny, who was pulling his trigger as fast as he could.
The Glock was pumping 9mm bullets into the flying form, spent brass skittering across the gravel. The lead passed right through him, ripping muscle and tissue and organs, shattering bones then punching into the truck beside them. The rounds didn’t send it flying backward, they barely slowed its forward momentum.
The thing slammed into him before he could get the gun high enough for a headshot. Panic had caused him to react but not fast enough to put it down with a brain scramble. He knew that worked, he had just done it to the painter and the little Mexican kid. He had seen Billy drop the little girl with a shot to the head when two to her body didn’t even faze her. It didn’t even know it was shot and Gunny hadn’t been lucky enough to sever its spine.
He went with the attack, falling back, rolling to his left, letting the thing’s inertia and weight carry it away from him and slam into the hood of the big rig head first. Gunny let go and spun away, towards the door, opening it and slamming the creature in the face as it recovered and lunged again. Its feet flew out from underneath it and it fell over backward as he scrambled into the cab of the still idling truck.
He slammed the door behind him, frantically looked for the lock button. He stared at it through the window as it jumped and clawed trying to get to him, not even registering the five or six holes he had pumped into it. Its intensity was unnerving. It slammed itself mindlessly against the truck over and over, denting the metal, breaking its fingers and teeth as it chewed and clawed.
There was the distinctive sound of a heavy caliber rifle report and Gunny stared through the windshield at Kim-Li on the catwalk above the main building. She was aiming towards the road and he followed her gun to see a small crowd of sprinters running towards the truck stop, some bounding on all fours like animals.
One of them toppled and fell to the ground. It looked like the man who had just left in the minivan when all this started. Was she shooting at people? Real people? But he saw clearly, then. The blood, the way they were running and keening. Not people. Definitely not.
They had been heading in his direction, but when they heard the crack of the rifle, they turned en mass towards it. Towards the truck stop. “Oh shit,” Gunny said aloud. Everyone in the diner was at the windows, staring out at the running horrors.
The windows.
At the speeds they were running and total indifference to their own injuries, they would hit those windows and shatter right through them.
Gunny hit the brake releases, slammed the rig into 3rd, stomped the pedal and grabbed the air horn. He heard more reports in quick succession as Kim fired up the few rounds she had. The big .30-06 was doing damage, much more than his 9mm rounds had. He saw some of them fall, but they got back up. She was doing body shots. Couldn’t blame her for that, head shots were difficult at the best of times, but she was definitely slowing them down.
He heard the sound of smaller caliber rounds being sent into the crowd from the men at the front door of the truck stop and the rapid fire from the M-4 that Scratch had. He spun gravel, fast shifting, trying to get some speed out of the rig. It was loaded heavy and he had to wind each gear before he could grab the next.
The creatures heard him, the sound of the air horn blasting and some of them changed course, heading right for him. But some had seen the patrons standing in the windows of the diner, hands to mouths, looks of shock and disbelief written all over their faces. They charged, screaming, howling and keening, full force towards the fresh food.
Gunny jumped the curb and plowed down the shrubbery between the truck parking lot and the automobile gas pumps. He grabbed another gear, foot to the floor, the big diesel roaring in protest at the abuse and speed shifted again, hitting sixth and pegging the tach all the way over to its governed limit.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 5